The Second Bank of the United States Chartered by Congress in 1816, the second Bank of the United States almost immediately became a subject of sectional controversy. The South and West regarded the bank as inimical to agrarian interests, whereas the Northeast viewed it as useful in regulating the money supply and stabilizing interest rates. The Panic of 1819 intensified opposition to the bank, and the Supreme Court’s ruling the same year in McCulloch v. Maryland putting it beyond the regulatory power of the states convinced many that it was not compatible with republican principles of government. When a bill extending the bank’s charter passed Congress in 1832, it was vetoed by President Jackson on constitutional grounds. His explanatory message to Congress rejected the Court’s McCulloch decision upholding the constitutionality of the bank, declaring: “The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.” After winning re-election, Jackson proceeded to destroy the bank through executive action. He ordered the secretary of the treasury to remove federal deposits to state banks, crippling the national bank. The Senate responded by censuring the president on March 28, 1834, an action later expunged from the record in 1837 by Jackson supporters.

The Protective Tariff During the early nineteenth century, Congress passed a number of tariffs to protect northern manufactures from foreign competition. The tariffs reduced foreign demand for American cotton, thereby earning opposition in the South. At the same time, the growth of northern industrial cities created demand for western food and raw materials, earning support for the protective tariff in the West. The 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” bought protection for northern manufactures and western agricultural interests at the expense of southern cotton planters. South Carolina Senator John Calhoun’s Exposition and Protest attacked the tariff as unconstitutional. It benefited the West and North at the expense of the South in violation of Congress’s duty to pass laws for the benefit of the entire nation. Drawing on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Calhoun argued that states had the power to nullify federal laws that they believed were unconstitutional. Nowhere in the South was opposition to the protective tariff stronger than in South Carolina, where in 1832 the state legislature summoned a convention to pass on the constitutionality of such measures. The convention, chaired by Senator Robert Hayne, adopted an ordinance of nullification declaring the tariff unconstitutional and prohibiting collection of duties in the state. The state threatened secession if the federal government intervened. Jackson responded forcefully to the challenge to federal authority. His Proclamation to the People of South Carolina on December 10, 1832 declared: “Disunion, by armed force, is TREASON . . . Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the head of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences—on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment—on your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country.” Congress supported his stance with the Force Act of March 2, 1833, which authorized the president to use federal troops to enforce the tariff. Armed conflict was averted by passage of the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which gradually reduced tariff schedules and expanded the list of free goods.

Sectionalism and Slavery While compromises struck at the Philadelphia Convention deferred the impending sectional conflict over slavery for a few decades, the issue nevertheless intruded into national politics on several fronts. In 1808 it became unlawful to import slaves into the United States, and the northern states had enacted measures phasing out slavery within their borders. But in the South slavery remained a viable and profitable institution. Article IV of the Constitution extended its reach across state boundaries by requiring the free states to return runaways to their owners. The status of slavery in the national territories ignited controversy when Missouri, originally a part of the Louisiana Territory, applied for admission to the Union as a slave state in 1818. Representative James Tallmadge of New York proposed conditioning Missouri’s admission to the Union on its agreement to abolish slavery gradually. The southern states rejected the proposal, leading to a deadlock that took Congress two years to resolve. The compromise finally struck provided that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state; Maine would separate from Massachusetts and become a free state in order to maintain the balance between free and slave states in Congress; and slavery would be prohibited in the rest of the Louisiana Territory north of the latitude 36°30’. The Compromise tacitly recognized the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the national territories. In a letter to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the Missouri Compromise, “this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

Election of 1824 The election of 1824 marked the end of the Era of Good Feelings and the reemergence of two-party politics in the United States. As several Republican leaders vied for the presidency, the party split into two factions: the National Republicans, led by John Quincy Adams, and the Democratic Republicans, led by Andrew Jackson. The former supported a strong national government, high tariffs, and the national bank. The latter supported states’ rights and opposed the national bank and, in the South at least, the protective tariff.

Georgia and Indian Removal By the nineteenth century, standing treaties between the federal government and the Creek and Cherokee Indians recognized the tribes as independent nations and confirmed their title to vast lands. But as the populations of Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee grew, so, too, did pressure from the states to extinguish Indian land titles. When the federal government refused to do so, Georgia acted unilaterally in arranging a corrupt agreement with a handful of Creek chiefs to buy 25 million acres of land for a nominal sum. The Creeks repudiated the agreement, and President Adams sent in federal troops to protect them from the state. The Cherokees fared less well when Andrew Jackson became president. In 1828, in flagrant violation of their treaty rights, Georgia annexed all Cherokee lands within the state. When Cherokee leaders appealed to Washington for protection, Jackson refused to intervene on their behalf. He also refused to enforce the holding of the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction over Cherokee lands and that the laws of Georgia did not apply there. His refusal to enforce their treaty rights set the stage for the mass removal of the Cherokees to the far west in a tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. One-fourth of the Cherokee nation perished during the trek.

Election of 1828 The election of 1828 was characterized by a new and rowdy populism. Andrew Jackson began campaigning against John Quincy Adams in 1825, a full three years before the election took place. Jackson’s bold, colorful character made him a highly compelling candidate, and he was aided by news coverage that glorified his military victories and frontier exploits. The entire South and West voted for Jackson, along with two northern states. Once in office, Jackson made the most of the power at his disposal. He was a firm believer in what Senator William Marcy called the spoils system, the practice of dispensing power and patronage in exchange for political loyalty. During his two terms in office, Jackson fired approximately 20 percent of all federal officeholders for political reasons.

The Whig Party The Whigs were a broad-based political coalition opposed to Andrew Jackson’s policies and highhanded methods. They included states’ rights advocates who opposed the president’s hard line against South Carolina, northeastern business interests supporting the national bank, southern planters who felt increasingly marginalized in national affairs, and westerners frustrated by Jackson’s opposition to federal transportation improvements. The party’s name derived from the constitutional struggle of the English Whigs against royal absolutism during the reign of James II.

Martin Van Buren Martin Van Buren earned the nickname “the little magician” in his native New York for both his stature and his political mastery. He successfully opposed the Whigs and won the presidency in the election of 1837, but his administration was fraught with crisis from the start. A financial panic prompted a run on banks, resulting in financial collapse and economic depression. Through the Independent Treasury Act of 1840, Van Buren divorced the treasury from financial intermediaries and established a subtreasury system that would manage the nation’s finances.

Election of 1840 The economic depression triggered by the Panic of 1837 helped propel the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison, into the presidency in 1840. Previous elections had been characterized by elements of populism, but the election of 1840 was altogether cynical in the Whig emphasis on obfuscation and political hoopla. Harrison was a newcomer to national politics, so he had no political history that opponents could hold against him. Van Buren, on the other hand, was characterized as an out-of-touch elitist indifferent to the nation’s economic woes. Dazzled by the spectacle of the Whigs’ political rallies and cheered by the hard cider that flowed freely at them, voters bought the Whig message and voted overwhelmingly for Harrison.

Supreme Court Appointments by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren Jackson and Van Buren treated their Supreme Court appointments as an extension of the spoils system, appointing party loyalists without regard to their judicial qualifications. John McLean was a seasoned politician who used his position on the Court to advance his presidential ambitions. Henry Baldwin was a volatile personality, but loyal. James Wayne was a firm supporter of the president through the Nullification Crisis, and Philip Barbour was a zealous supporter of states’ rights and opponent of the national bank. When the Judiciary Act of 1837 expanded the number of justices on the Supreme Court to nine, John Catron and Peter Daniel were appointed. Jackson’s most significant appointment went to Roger B. Taney. With John Marshall’s death in 1836, the president chose his longtime advisor and loyal Democrat to succeed the great Federalist. An able lawyer and ardent defender of states’ rights, he would carry Jackson’s legacy forward long after the President left office.